sean connects falling gold prices with bessent’s attempts to maintain $ hegemony.

thank you, siljan!  a patrushev tutorial is always a gift.  bless you.

danny & kj & kj’s appraisal of trump’s blunder.

thank you, amarynth.    please accept my sincere apology for failing to provide a summary of what it was i thought pepe had revealed that you may find helpful & noteworthy.   my summations are invariably goofy so i rarely do.    i hesitated to post this interview let alone address you but i decided to risk it even if it was old news long known to you…i posted it on the off chance you may’ve found it helpful.

i try to follow news on pakistan, which as you’ve pointed out is usually very sketchy.   over the years, i’ve had a few pakistani friends & in remembrance of them, i followed imran with devotion.  & even though i knew china wouldn’t intervene, no matter i was disappointed that china did not & to this day i continue to pray imran will be released, & that china may be working, inscrutably to that end.

my interest in pakistan  jumped to a completely other level when china shared weapons with pakistan—even if simply to battle test them—that fact moved pakistan to a front burner, low temp, waiting to bubble.

& after the supremacy of china’s weapons & pakistan’s victory pakistan began to surface.  it was invited here, there & in the oddest circumstances, in spite its reputation of being like turkey like india, a tricky guest with dubious powerful friends.  yet china’s confidence in its relationship with pakistan caused me to speculate that perhaps china was helping to bring it in from the cold.

no great leap, then to have a ‘feeling’ that pakistan was selected for its role in the MoU because of china…& when araghchi hugged sharif, when refusing to soil his palm with blood stained hands, i perked up & hit rewind.  a day or so ago i posted a link to a sub stack (can’t remember off hand which one but chinese) that addressed brics’ interest in pakistan may well be its mineral resources, which are worth trillions.

i knew you were interested in pakistan & were preparing an essay on it.  when pepe connected from sources that china was backing pakistan as a mediator—i posted it.  NOT in any way to obstruct you or to waste your time or divert you from your essay but simply because pepe is the first ‘authoritative observer’ that has presented that perspective as fact, he speaks of it with authority & pepe doesn’t usually present things he’s dubious about with authority but rather discloses it as news that may be nothing more than rumour.  this sounds real, & pepe sounds convinced that what he was reporting is true.

kevin on DARPA needs….

nima & pravin

radhika & michael